OK, I'll play along as if I was a sophomore in college smoking week and having a late night discussion: Why aren't they considered communist?
Nope. Tell me why the U.S. taxpayer should continue providing free health care for much of Europe. Tell me what your version is...
Scandinavia are in fact 4 distinct countries all of whom have a combined population smaller than NYC. Since you brought it up as an example, the idea that now you're backpeddling out of it is fun to watch for sure... Do try to answer the question though. Lest you be perceived as just "silly"...
Ultimately, the goal of Socialism is a totalitarian state. It is wonderful to want the collective to own everything. To make it work, people who just want what they worked to achieve have to be killed. There's a saying that goes something like this: In capitalism, man exploits man. In socialism, it's the other way around. Free market capitalism permits people to amass as much wealth as their intelligence and work ethic allow. In socialism, those who own the police and military can amass as much wealth as they can appropriate from people who did the work.
AOC is socialist. Is that bad? Yes this is bad.....its like a disease that eventually kills its ownself off. Designed for failure. Even more so than American Leftists.
Just as Obama was the answer to Bush, AOC is the answer to Trump. The farther the right or left pushes outward, the farther out the answering call will be. It's too bad. As it looks right now - It might be the second election in a row that I use a write in candidate. We really need a viable third party in this country.
Militarism has long been extremely profitable for the US, no doubt, its arms sales to allies and others leading the world, but you have offered no evidence that "U.S. defense spending... allows many countries to forego their own military spending to fund social programs." Do you have any real numbers? Israel actually allocates a higher percentage of its GDP to its military budget (5.38%) than does the US (4.6%), and yet achieves high-quality single-payer universal health care at a much lower per-capita cost than the US, whilst maintaining a wide range of other progressive social programs. All leading, first world, industrial nations combine enlightened capitalism with programs to address the needs of their people in a pragmatic approach to governance, not some airy-fairy "pc" ideological notion of one sort or another.
Israel is an interesting case in that they would either have to militarize their entire culture into a Sparta-like existence if not for the U.S. defense umbrella that covers them, or they would have been wiped out by Islamist countries decades ago. Or are you implying that they are not in need of taxpayer money from the U.S.? And I did provide the numbers in a link above. Using either the percentage of GDP spending on the military or simply using the figure spent for each year's federal budget, the U.S. is spending more than any European nation. Using the Nordic countries the ignorant young person from earlier cited, you can easily see that health care spending is much more of each country's GDP OR percentage of their budget. This 2015 article from USA Today shows healthcare spending; it's rather simple to compare this to their military spending: https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...st-countries-spend-most-health-care/75771044/ If these countries had to exit the U.S. defense umbrella, they would have to decide to fund their military at the cost of virtually eliminating healthcare or depend on the good nature of Russia and China or other potential threats. Thus my observation that it is U.S. taxpayers who are essentially paying for the healthcare of most Europeans. And Israel also, apparently...
its common sense!! France has huge taxes compared to us and still people are rioting in the streets because they cant make ends meets after all the typical libsocialist waste. France wanted to use it jets to bomb chad but could not get them there because they had no aerial tankers. We had help them with ours. Now does the liberal understand?
but we have 70% of all recent medical patents. they need to copy us it would be stupid for us to copy them
not only that but everything is invented here. As it is they live at about 50% of our GDP, without our inventions they would live at 25%. libsocialism does not work
Advanced nations with single-payer health care have managed to cover everyone at a far lower per capita cost than the US. Were they to irrationally adopt the US system, they would require far greater assistance from the US for whom post-WWII militarism has been enormously profitable. Of course the US recognizes that having an effective front line of defense in the Middle East and Europe is in its interests. Pretending it is an eleemosynary matter defies the reality.
Of course. Bureaucrats control the purse strings and dictate what you can and cannot get. In single-payer health schemes the system is more important than the patient.
its a fact that France has no tankers. for their jets to get far they need our military. Canada Europe the same way. We're the world's policeman
Hardcore ideologues need to rationalize the most expensive health care on earth that performs at an inferior level to advanced nations in many categories, and fails to cover tens of millions whose medical expenses are routinely dumped on the tax payer. What is "common sense" is that all advanced nations would, pragmatically, adopt the most economical, efficient, and demonstrably successful paradigm.
There are more people in California than in all of Scandinavia. Also, I don't think US Citizens will tolerate the level of xenophobia and bias those countries practice to insure their high tax/social programs work. I would suggest people who want that kind of thing should just move there, but, they probably won't let you in.